still like pulling down their estimates. i'd like to see them at least stabilize and maybe even have a couple quarters of beats before i really feel that it was like safe in that value because right now the trajectory still looks downward. charles: i think bottom line is you don't have to try to pick the bottom. i wish i had more time, i kind of short changed you but thank you, always appreciate your insight. now over to my colleague, liz claman, and we're getting a little momentum, liz. not too bad. liz: a little bit. you know, charles i heard you reference in your hour that the number one song in june of 1982 was it paul mccartney and stevie wonder's eboni and ivory? do you know what it was in july? charles: i saw the whole list and i forgot. liz: human leagues. charles: i love that song! liz: i hate it. ♪ working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, when i met you ♪ charles: she became big and famous and then ditched them.

liz: i know. women! charles, thank you very much. okay, 1982 that's how far you have to go back to see prices this high, but the markets seem to be singing a different tune. check out the nasdaq, headed for three straight wins as investors slrug of the massive price increases we just got reported from december. dow let's call it flatlining just hovering slightly below, the s&p up 10 points the nasdaq up 42. high costs are not just a problem for consumers. the grocery sector, and investors in it, are faced with tough decisions on how to raise prices even higher now and how they might affect the stock. in his first enter view since the cpi release, the ceo of organic and health food giant is here to react this is a fox business exclusive. you'll want to hear how he makes those decisions on raising prices, and its been one year since new terms from diamond

hands hands and to the moon we're added to the stock market lexicon the reddit rebels making a dramatic entrance one year ago this week in their effort to take on wall street's releast traders, jamie rgozinski's created wall street's best form years ago and here on a fox business exclusive on the rise of the retail investor and whether the meme stock craze still has the power to move markets or could soon peter out , but first, fox business alert, inflation speeding ahead at the fastest pace in nearly 40 years didn't scare the daylights out of investors but the feds rear view mirror look at economic regions throughout the u.s. did send a bit of a shiver through the dow jones industrials upon its release an hour ago and you can see on this intraday chart. right at 2:00 p.m. we dipped into the red, the fed's december book and basically what that does is it scruitinizes econom ies of 12 districts in the u.s. , hit the tape at 2:00 p.m. eastern, the report indicated demand remains elevated that's a good thing, right?

optimism is still high, but note that a sudden pullback in travel and leisure spending no doubt due to the omicron outbreak. what's surprising is that the december consumer price index, which measures cost consumers pay for nearly everything, did not freak out the market at all when it came out this morning. cpi spiked 7% year-over-year. that is the fastest increase since june of 1982 as we said. the energy complex as a whole in the 12 month period show showed absolute gains up 29.3% including a nearly let's call it 50% rise for gasoline year-over-year. between fed chair jerome powell 's testimony yesterday and today's cpi, neither really dented investor resolve so here is the question. are the teflon markets back let's get to our floor show traders, teddy and scott. all right, if anything could freak out the market, teddy, you would think it could have been the cpi. have the bulls grown thicker

skin since monday, what's going on here? >> i think in the very short-term, liz, the fed are masters at dealing with investor expectations. now the numbers are what the numbers are, but we've had a lot of read or ic and clearly, we're in for a period of rising short-term rates and perhaps in the very short-term, that has been priced into the market. the bigger issue is, i think, for the markets is that we are now clearly entering a period of tightening and higher rates that we don't have a market that's discounted that in the sense that we're trading, you know, at some kind of discounted level down 10 or 15%. we have a market that's trading at all times highs and kind of l evitating at all times highs there is a tipping point here somewhere, we don't know where it is but there will be a point where the markets will not react , will react negatively to what's going on in the fed simply because these markets

have basically been driven by accommodating fed. liz: teddy, it's happening right this second. these headlines, are appearing right now from the wall street journal, and yes, it's fed- related. james bullard of the st. louis fed is taking a real swipe at how the fed handled last year and everything that it had done. bullard is saying that fed asset buying over 2021 this is breaking right now was "more than the economy needed" and that four rate hikes, four rate hikes are expected for 2022 and appear likely. bullard also said the 2021 liquidity could be removed with likely little disruption but what you're see ing right now is the dow jones industrials gapping down just a bit by 44 points, this is , as we said, breaking news at the moment. s&p is still up six points, transports, they're wavering around here the nasdaq is up 27, high of the session for the nasdaq though was a gain

of 165. scott, what do you make of what bullard is saying here, i mean, duh. >> well, it's not new, number one, number two is here's where my concern is, liz, is that this inflation is self- fulfilling inflation. its got money inflation. it's free money inflation. my father's inflation looks a lot different than today's inflation does because you used to be able to say i'll raise rates to get out in front of an overheating economy or stop one that's already overheated. i don't think you can say the u.s. economy is overheating by any means really. look at the last three jobs numbers, so here's where i think we've divorced those two thing, we've got inflation on one hand from free money, and then on the other hand we have an economy that's just sputtering along, right? i think that's going to be very difficult for dr. powell to have to thread that needle with how much chemotherapy to give to this cancer patient, cancer being inflation because if he doesn't do it just right he could run the risk of killing the economy or killing the patient so that's what i'm

going to be watching so i think we're going to have maybe two quarters of a lot of bumpy ride. the market took what today had to say in stride, because of the expectation, we hit the expectation. there was no surprises, right? we were all looking for a 7% number, yes, is that the fastest since 1982 but it wasn't a surprise. that's why the market took it okay, but we have such a problem ahead of us. it's his afghanistan moment. we know what he's got to do, what powell has got to do. just how does he do it. can he thread that needle without hurting one hand and getting rid of the problem on the other, that's the biggest question so we can say he's going to have four rate hikes this year and that might be the case i don't know but i'll tell you right now if something goes wrong, as mike tyson says, everybody has got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. liz: right. punched in the mouth, in the nose, the teeth, but again, these headlines from bullard, you can see from the transports, teddy, again it's not a huge drop, 26 points, at about 15,000

and change here but you're now seeing dow just kind of falling a little bit more down 47 points we're keeping on an eye on these heads, it's an interview with the wall street journal where he is saying, the asset buying was just too much, but what do we see? we do see inflation, in fact specifically, used cars and trucks. we're going to talk about food in a second, used cars and trucks, that's the biggest headline increase, along with gasoline, and no surprise that general motors hit the tape this morning early saying they are coming out with a challenge to carvana and the online used car sites, yes, general motors is down 1% but carvara is down more than 4% a piece, really interesting stuff you're looking at certain names trying to take sort of a position and morphing their business as we speak to these prices and participating and benefiting from them. teddy? >> oh, [laughter]

sorry, liz. listen, -- liz: he's stung by bullard's comments. >> i'm not stunned or surprised but i think the market continues in my opinion to levy tate at these levels in the face of the message that clearly the fed has sent to help the markets, but the reality is, you have markets, in 2009, liz, the dow was 6,600. the dow today is 36,000, and for the large part, it has driven, the markets been driven on the backs of a very accommodative fed especially the last couple of years. if as they shift gears with markets trade at all times highs , the two are not compatible. if we had a very strong economy, then the interest rates would kind of, you know, the markets could move along with higher interest rates, but if scott is right about the economy, and he very well might be, higher

interest rates, markets at all times highs, i think it becomes problematic. liz: scott, teddy, thank you very much. we're looking at the dow, still down just about 48 points. again, we had been up 201 earlier in the session. we have this breaking news for you, the white house press briefing is expected to begin at any moment. we will be listening for more information specifically on the biden administration's announcement that it will now shoulder the cost of 10 million covid tests per-month targeted for schools in order to help them stay open. companies like abbot labs which makes the binax now covid test kits which they used in las vegas, ces ordered 90,000 for the consumer electronics show, they will be likely press ed to boost production to keep pace with team biden's evolving pandemic plan. edward lawrence joins us from the white house, as new cases are out, do we know how and from whom the government will be sourcing these tests? are the that's the big question

he's already, the president has already instituted or employed the defense production act to make sure these companies that make those tests have the stuff they need to make the tests and so far it has not been enough. as you mentioned they have now announced they are going to give 10 million additional tests per- month to schools to keep them open. >> these 10 million additional tests available each month will allow schools to double the volume of testing they were performing in november. reporter: now the press secretary will no doubt get questions about where those tests will come from, now we have all seen and i've been in those long lines to get a covid test. that's if you can find an appointment to get one. the administration did sign its first contract a week ago with gold belt security to deliver the first part of the 500 million at-home tests that the president promised. still, the former hhs secretary tom price says before anynor money goes to hhs for covid testing or for any kind of response, there needs to be accountability.

>> the amount of money needed for testing hasn't gone to testing as senator collins said, we know that $850 million at least went to the southern border to take care of the challenges that were created by this administration but there's been little transparencies or accountability on where this money has gone and that's a major problem. reporter: so in all, liz, we have $73 billion that's been allocated in two separate bills for testing as well as therapeutics that was passed last spring, that money yet to really be given out. back to you. liz: edward lawrence thank you very much we'll be watching and we've got a mixed picture for a lot of it, test and vaccine makers. americans are having an absolute cow over high meat prices as run -away inflation drives up the cost of just about everything in the grocery store, including, yes, pork, meat, all of it. in his first interview since the consumer price index came out this morning, we've got the

ceo of organic and health food conglomerate hanes celestial. his reaction to the number plus as the supply chain is still stretched to its limits, how he decides which items need to see higher price tags. it's a fox business exclusive. closing bell ringing in 37 minutes. the "clayman countdown" is coming right back. this... is the planning effect. this is how it feels to have a dedicated fidelity advisor looking at your full financial picture. this is what it's like to have a comprehensive wealth plan with tax-smart investing strategies designed to help you keep more of what you earn. and set aside more for things like healthcare, or whatever comes down the road. this is "the planning effect" from fidelity.

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liz: okay, we now know, obviously, that overall consumer inflation last month spiked to 40 year highs, but the food industry and quite frankly, anyone who eats food, has been hit particularly hard. beef and seal up 18%, pork has popped 15%, fish 8%, chicken up 10.4%. who are the decision makers when it comes to hiking prices on what you eat? is it the grocery stores, the markets, the manufactures and as the food industry pays more for its ingredients and materials, is the snarled global supply chain only the beginning of the problem? in his first television interview since the release of

this mourns cpi report hain cele stial group ceo mark shiller joins us live. your reaction to the highest price increase in 40 years? >> yeah, i think this has been emerging for a while and i'm not surprised that it went up this month versus previous months and i think there's probably a little bit more to go we're seeing inflation everywhere, wages, packaging, ingredients, transportation, and while our job as leaders is to find as much productivity as possible to offset it when you're looking at double-digit cost inflation on our business, you have to pass some of that on to the consumer. liz: we hear from the president, we hear from the transportation secretary yesterday, jay powell of the federal reserve yesterday that the ports and the supply chains are the problem. we have been watching this very closely and we're not so sure that that's the number one problem. what do you see as the major issue when it comes to yes, ris ing prices but then eventually at least having the

opportunity to bring them back down again. >> i think it all starts with labor. the lack of available labor has led to the supply chain problems that we have, so not enough people to pick the crops, all the way to not enough drivers, not enough people to unload the containers that are sitting off the port in california. i think it really all starts with labor and has been reported we've seen record numbers of people dropping out of the workforce, and we've seen a lot of other people who have said they're opting for jobs where they can work-from-home so in a service economy, of the lack of available labor is leading to certainly wage inflation which will be permanent but also, the knock-on effect of all of the shortages and bottlenecks we're having within the supply chain. liz: i know you guys have raised prices over at hain celestial by depending on the product bias much as 8%. what goes into deciding as you look at you guys have so many brands, earth's best, garden of

eaten, i should know these by heart, i eat so many of them, celestial tea, what do you take into account when deciding how much to raise a price on a product? >> well certainly, we look at what the inflation is by product , because obviously, the ingredients are different by brand, and so the cost inflation is different by brand, but then we also look at consumer elasticity in terms of what we think the response will be if we do raise prices, we try and offset again as much cost as possible. we look at our position cocompetitively. we want to make sure that we stay within a certain price range of our competitive set, and we try and find parts of the business that we think are going to be less elastic so that maybe certain channels or certain sub-segments of the business where we think the consumer response will be more favorable, so for example, on a brand where i am the lowest price offering in the market, i certainly have more likelihood to take an increase than if i'm the highest price product in the category, and so it really is very surgical.

it's done brand-by-brand and trying to find a way to pass on as much of the cost as possible without really derailing the momentum and the long term potential of the business. liz: and part of that long term potential involves growing for acquisitions, $259 million combined acquisition with parm crisps and right now because of the spac attack we had over the past year and a half, many acquisition targets have gotten really outrageously expensive. how do you avoid overpaying just so that you continue to acquire and grow? >> yeah, you have to be very disciplined, so we've probably looked at 30 different acquisitions over the last three years and this is the first one we've made, because we believe it's the right price at the right time and so, you know, we bought a business that's growing mid-teens on the top line, with good margins, and a lot of distribution and expansion

opportunity and we bought it for a little less than 2.5 times sales but we've had some things that are 10 times sales and said we're just not going to get a good return for shareholders so it is really about patience and discipline and having a core business that can carry your financial algorithm such that acquisitions are a luxury and not a necessity and that's really the position we put ourselves in. we think this is a terrific addition to our snacks portfolio where we publicly said we want to be a bigger player, and very incremental to what we currently sell so we're excited to have it and we think it's going to be a real gem in our portfolio. liz: wow you looked at 30 and you picked up one, first acquisition. warren buffett be proud he's big on being disciplined no matter what the market is doing, mark great to have you thank you very much, mark schiller. >> my pleasure, thank you. liz: its been a rough couple of years down on the farm. first it was donald trump's tariffs and now, joe biden's inflation, not to mention mother

nature's wrath. grady trimble is talking with farmers about the endless headaches in the heartland, with the closing bell ringing in 38 minutes, dow jones industrials now down just two points, call it four, five, i don't know, six , [laughter] it's a very narrow trading range here. we're coming right back, nasdaq still up about 32. ♪ limu emu and doug.♪ and it's easy to customize your insurance at libertymutual.com so you only pay for what you need. isn't that right limu? limu? limu? sorry, one sec. doug blows several different whistles. doug blows several different whistles. [a vulture squawks.] there he is. only pay for what you need. ♪liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty♪

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liz: breaking news, you're looking live at the capitol rotunda where the body of former senate majority leader harry reid is laying in state. just moment ago president joe biden and the first lady stopped to pay their respects immediately after attending the funeral of general ray odier no. we're looking at this live and it was moments ago these videos were taken as president biden pays his respects to harry reid. apple may soon be taking a bite out of the hottest new trend,

with the metaverse now suddenly, you know, the conversation tech investors are having, analysts have launched the apple headset guessing game. now to be clear, apple has not announced any new hardware or anything for the digital universe yet, but, investors and analysts are betting the world's most valuable company is gearing up to add augmented reality and glasses and headsets and devices to its list of products by the end of the year. bernstein analysts say ar devices could boost apple revenue by 4% through the year 2030 and could represent more than 20% of its overall revenue by 2040. shares of apple have popped in recent weeks. right now they're up just a fraction, but the company, of course as you know, has become the first company to hit a $3 trillion market cap. and staying with apple the stock popping this morning on a report from goldman sachs saying that iphone delivery times suggest supply is now more than meeting demand, following last year's supply chain difficulties, but problems for the mac book pro

still persist as the company continues to see delays due to supply challenges across the globe. shares of biogen, been a tough session for investors here are sliding at this hour after u.s. regulators proposed limiting access to the company's new and controversial alzheimers drug for medicare patients. analysts say the decision will greatly diminish sales of the drug and cut into the company's bottom line. biogen down 7 one-third percent to $223.67. here's a question for you what do kim kardashian, floyd may weather and nba star paul pierce all have in common? the three are among a handful of celebrities being sued for allegedly scams their social media followers by promoting a crypto pump and dump scheme. this lawsuit says that wealthy celebrities used their influence to promote a speculative token called ethererum max encouraging their millions of followers to

buy into the cryptocurrency before the price crashed 98%. ethererum max is unrelated to the popular ethererum token which is actually doing pretty well over the past 12 hours, we can take a look at all of the cryptos at the moment. bitcoin at the moment is at 43, 709 for a gain of more than $1,000, ethererum is up four and one-third percent to 3, 373. we showed earlier how americans grocery bills shot up in december and it could get worse as farmers and ranchers are looking at rising costs dealing with them as they cultivate livestock, let's go to princeton , illinois live because grady trimble is there at a farm that grows soy and corn. this news keeps getting worse, grady. reporter: yeah, everything farmers need to do their jobs, liz, costs more right now, whether it's fuel that goes into their farm equipment and trucks to haul the grain that they grow here, or the farm equipment

itself, or the fertilizer. it is all up way higher than a year ago. evan holstein is unfortunately dealing with it firsthand as you grow your grain here that eventually becomes livestock feed, we see the higher meat prices and this is one piece of that higher price puzzle. >> yeah, i mean, while they aren't a direct correlation, there's still, we pay these kind of massive increases in our input costs. that meat eventually finds its way to the shelf in the grocery store. reporter: when you look at the percentages that you mentioned it's just staggering in terms of fertilizer, fuel, farm equipment , i mean, the percent increase from a year ago is huge >> yeah, we're probably on average about 30% higher on our fertilizer cost and probably 50- 60% on our fuel. reporter: i guess the good news is that corn and soybeans are trading higher on the commodities market right now the question is, how long will that continue and are they high enough to offset your rising costs? >> yeah, i think in 2021, the

story for farmers was high commodity prices and good profit potential. heading into this year, you know , we still have good commodity prices but with these massive increases in our input costs and our margins being squeezed, profitability is really in question. reporter: and that's not a good thing in any business, liz. uncertainty but that is what they're dealing with here, the first step in america's food supply chains, are nation's farms. liz: well, my organic peanut butter that i love to buy, i looked at it yesterday at whole foods, grady. it was $19 for a jar. i said i'm out! i'm out. reporter: you didn't buy it? liz: no, i did not. no way! that's an outrage. oh, my gosh. reporter: i saw $20 honey the other day at the grocery store by the way. liz: i'd rather buy the bees. okay, grady thank you very much, grady trimble. it has been a year, can you

believe this , since the reddit revolution took on and yanked off wall street's short sellers short bets. wall street bets founder, the guy who started it all years ago, jamie rogozinski is here on a fox business exclusive on what he sees has really changed and whether the retail investors still have the collective muscle they flexed back in 2021. don't get all mad and start tweeting at me and charlie gasparino. listen to what jamie rogozinski has to say about this. closing bell ringing in 27 minutes the dow backup into positive territory by 11 points, s&p by 9, nasdaq better and teflon skin wrapped around the markets at the moment.

at vanguard, you're more than just an investor, you're an owner with access to financial advice, tools and a personalized plan that helps you build a future for those you love. vanguard. become an owner. liz: breaking news. we want to show you shares of gamestop. look at them popping, once again , at this hour. we have it up 73.25%, but this

is a story we'll be on the video game retail chain stock. david's and i say pleural, are banding together to tear down the wall street goliath. retail or individual investors have flooded a wall street- focused reddit chat room with the explicit goal of aiming their sling shots at big hedge funds that are short or betting against game shares, and in a stunning move, they appear to be preventing the shorts from making huge profits on the stock s decline. that was one year ago, the height of meme stock mania, when the reddit revolution grabbed the collective attention of millions of investors, wall street masters of the universe, and eventually regulators. it all began when individual investors gathered in reddit chat room wall street bets, banned together, and flipped the tables on the financial world goliath by piling into heavily shorted stocks and pushing them up.

does the man who started the movement years ago believe the mania is over or just beginning? in a fox business exclusive, joining me now, the founder of wall street bets jamie rogozinski. whoa, jamie. >> hi, liz, how are you? liz: we pulled that tape from a year ago. i'm well, but what a difference a year makes. this made the history books. give me your thought right now on whether you think this is still alive today. >> well, look. depending on what you mean by this , when it comes to a short squeeze, the way we saw with gamestop, i seriously doubt we're going to see something that's going to be the same in the future, not because of size of the community or the number of people that are interested in doing this but because the market wised up and they have been able to close those loopholes but in terms of finding the inefficiencies in the market for retail traders to profit that's going to continue and started before gamestop and is going to continue and it's going to be even more impressive given the number of people that

have joined this market. liz: you know, i might agree with you, certainly on wild days the likes of what we saw on january 26 where we saw dramatic spikes in these stocks and we can pull out one year charts so you can actually see , you, meaning the viewer, amc, gamestop, express, all of these names, blackberry, that really got before sort of the attention and the movement, the push by the so-called apes. that's what they call themselves as we all know but i think you're right. the movement when it comes to trading volume is not there at least at the moment when you look at the trading volume for example, of gamestop in the past month the average daily volume was about 3 million shares. back on that day, one year ago, 60.7 million shares for gamestop , flip it over to amc, in the last month, 47.4 million shares average daily volume, but a year ago, 224.7 million shares.

what, however, do you feel the reddit rebels can do now? what is their next step, their next opportunity? >> look, they're constantly on the look out for these in efficiencies. at the end of the day, the people that are coming to the market, they are looking to find a way to profit and these retail traders they don't have these high frequency trading, they aren't co-located, they don't have big hedge fund data analysis. they are looking for something they can use from their own cell phone or whatever it is and find an advantage and an in efficiency they can explain in the market and prior to gamestop they didn't have to do so much with picking a stock and making the price of that go up. it's about finding these quirks in the system and identifying them and you have literally millions of people that are like beta testing the market, the financial system, and they've found them before and they will continue to find them. how and what they are going to be is really hard to tell but i can guarantee you that it's going to be spectacular when they do and it might be in the form of making these prices go up, it might be in the form of o creating crazy volatility

who knows what's going to happen but with that many eyeballs, that many sophisticated individuals so interested in the market you're guaranteed to have something. liz: well they've certainly demonized the short sellers. do you think at some point they become short sellers, is that a possibility? >> of course it is. that was a possibility during the pandemic in 2020 when the stocks were, the market lost like 50% of its value, all wall street bets was shorting it. in fact they were making so much money they felt guilty about it and started these charity drives to donate some of their profits. people start off by saying hey let's try and make some money, let's have fun, but i have no doubt that they will if that's where the direction of the market is going. liz: well they got the markets attention, jamie, and you started it all, in fact, i mean there was a truck driver this week who actually gotta warded by finra a $30,000 cash award in a lawsuit he filed the moment that robinhood, the obviously the online brokerage, back during this time shutdown the ability to sell

stocks. wait a minute, to buy them. i get them confused because the whole thing shocked me at the time. people were not allowed to buy but they were allowed to sell, however he couldn't find any buyers at that point. >> yeah, that's interesting. i hadn't heard that. i know there was a number of class action lawsuits that were filed against robinhood. liz: this is a first award, that's the thing. >> yeah, no so i'm surprised by that because this is not just robinhood. robinhood took the brunt of the heat because they were the biggest broker actually involved with this but it was, you know, two day settlement like collateral issue that deals with the clearing house and what not, but nevertheless, it was a lot of people lost money because of that and the system obviously was setup such that the retail traders were hurt by this , and helping these hedge funds, and so i'm really happy for this particular truck driver and i hope other people are able to also claim there's. liz: fairly, let's hope. really quick, reddit is going to ipo soon. what do you think?

how do you think it'll do? >> i mean, we'll see. i guess it depends a lot on the market conditions. it's a solid business, it's doing very well. one of the things that concerns me about these types of social media platforms is that they come and go, like unless they have a crazy monopoly like facebook and they've expand expanded and bought up instagram , we've seen time and time again from my space to whatever it is, people have these short interest timeframes with these things, and so it be kind of a risky venture unless you decide to really expand, but other than that i'm sure for the moment they will do just fine given their numbers. liz: all right the founder of wall street bets chat room says expect something spectacular from the meme crowd we'll be watching, jamie thank, happy new year. >> thank you, you too. liz: meme stocks captured investor attention in 2021, obviously well 2022 cryptocurrencies, what are they doing? they flew upward in 2021 with ripple's xrp striking a record

high in april; however the sec lawsuit against ripple clipped the crypto's wings. charlie has the latest developments on the case, next. closing bell ringing in 16 minutes. dow a little bit more comfortable above the flat line up 22 points we're coming right back. don't go away. (vo) singing, or speaking. reason, or fun. daring, or thoughtful. sensitive, or strong. progress isn't either or progress is everything.

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liz: now, this is interesting. omicron has struck again. xrp has added more than 4% to its value over just the last 24 hours on news that proceedings in the securities and exchange commission versus ripple case will have to be pushed back now a month due to the spread of new covid infections. to charlie gasparino, with the latest breaking developments

charlie: we should point out, this is a fox business report that moved that from my producer and i've been posting some stuff more recently. our reporting has moved xrp. here is what we know about this case. we were just asking simple questions, where is it? people thought, you know, earlier that early this year, there be some movement in the ripple case versus the sec, the sec suing ripple. the big technology company over its xrp cryptocurrency saying it's really a security that needs to be registered with the sec. ripple says no way, we're no different than ethererum and bitcoin, and this thing is going to be hashed out in court. it's probably the biggest crypto case out there. it's going to set the stage for sec enforcement going forward, how much authority they have versus the cftc, so keep an eye on this but we were just asking simple questions. where the hell is it? we're into january. we found out there was no movement and then we are

thinking here is what elle essentially came up with. both the sec and ripple are asking the judge in this case, a federal judge, to delay the case amid the covid surge. they are having a hard time getting all the witnesses and they want to, there's about eight left of the 16 they want and they want them to pose them face to face. it's very hard to do this over zoom, because these things last, could last seven hours, like a seven hour limit so in order to really get to the bottom of it of a deposition you kind of got to go back and forth and because of the covid surge it's hard to do that right now and they don't want to do it via zoom and it's both sides saying yeah, please, delay this , i think the deadline for depositions was this week, now that i think, i know, its now been delayed or they both asked the judge to delay to february 28. we'll see what the judge says, usually when both sides ask for a delay, they say okay, and they delay the thing to februar. again, they want to do all 16,

not just they get the eight done this week that i think if the initial eight will be done this week but they got to do 16 and that's why february 28 date is imperative for both sides, and here is another interesting side note. there's a lot of little news on ripple today in this case. ripple's request for privileged sec documents, their internal discussions and documents, e-mails, about what they were saying about xrp versus ethererum, why ethererum was given a break and not xrp, the judge is going to rule on ripple's request to get those documents. if those documents become public , liz, exactly why xrp, because part of the case here for xrp and ripple, why are you holding us to a different standard than ethererum? i know we did certain things, they did almost the same stuff in terms of creating the eth, their cryptocurrency, they used, they did an offering essentially

, a digital offering, to fund their platform. that's an issue. if that's what you're dinging us for , selling our xrp to fund our platform and they are thus making it a security. if it's a security it needs to be registered with the sec. ripple has you know has not done that, ethererum has not done that and of course, the bitcoin people, whoever they are, whoever created bitcoin didn't do it back in the day but apparently they are giving a pass to bitcoin and ether, and not xrp. liz, interesting case. let me tell you something. the crypto world cares big time about this case. liz: they do and you and ellie are on it. charlie: she did a good job moving xrp. i don't know why it's moving but over this , but she moved it. liz: well, it gives maybe xrp more time. charlie great to see you thank you very much. fourth quarter earnings kicking off friday. how to position yourself ahead of it when we come back, look at the dow now up 77.

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matching your job description. visit indeed.com/hire ♪. liz: here we go, three minutes to go before the closing bell rings. look at the markets right now comfortably in the green after after federal reserve st. louis president james bullard said four interest hikes likely in 2022. not exactly news. the dow blipped but kind of recovered. nasdaq on pace for third up day in a row. fourth quarter earnings season kicks off friday with financial names. we have chris sack really independent alliance. position me ahead, chris? what would you be buying? >> good time to buy financials given rates are going higher. right now we like wells fargo. we like bank of america and fans of jpmorgan. we think the really big banks are positioned well to take

advantage of the current situation. liz: are they the only ones that are positioned well? are there some larger regionals that could actually participate in an upside move here? they do a lot of local lending? >> absolutely. not that the names we're most interested in are the only ones that benefit from a higher interest rate environment or the opportunity to make more loans, you're correct. regional probation do well. all banks will havep opportunity to participate. we think risk/reward in terms valuation, franchise strength and revenue growth opportunities. liz: yeah. higher rates mean higher opportunities of making more on the loans that the big financials and the regionals do make but it also means a lot higher gasoline prices. we already saw with the four decade high on cpi for december, consumer price index and oil right now is climbing in the after market. light sweet crude, closed at 82.64. right now it is at 82.68 in the

after market session. do you have other plays you feel that can bounce off what looks like a bad inflation story? >> definitely inflation is a problem. 7% year-over-year number we saw this morning, to your point, 40-year high, something we've seen not in decades. other parts of the portfolio have been doing well have been in the energy space. we do own a few mlps, master limited partnerships that ben fight from pipeline drilling and exploration companies. ultimately yes the energy sector is in a great spot. it is having a great start in 2022. at some point vault wages will catch up with that story but as long as oil continues to climb that is great for the energy sector as well. liz: chris, thanks to see you, chris zaccarelli. as we look at numbers before the

closing bell, looks like the nasdaq will go higher three straight days as investors might normally think scary headlines, 40 year inflation highs. federal reserve making comments not three but four rate hikes this year. [closing bell rings] everything off the earlier highs though. that will do it for "the claman countdown." stay tuned because my booed friend larry kudlow -- ♪. larry: welcome to "kudlow." i'm larry kudlow. when you think uncle joe biden can't fall any deemer into his own yogurt, you know what i mean yogurt, he does. his election takeover speech was another example. here is a bit of sound for to you chew on. >> i will not yield, i will not flinch, i will defend the right to vote, our democracy against